South Korea Compared To North Korea There are all kinds of opinions about weapons and our ability to be able to defend ourselves. There is probably one indisputable truth and it is the United States has the power to destroy the world, but we are not the only ones. Currently Russia probably has the same power. This is because both the United States and Russia have many thousands of nuclear weapons of a size which could do that trick. Pakistan while have many hundreds of nukes and maybe even a few thousand has much smaller tactical nukes for use on the battlefield. What good are all these nukes, we really can’t use them except as a talking point, because the last thing anyone wants to do is start a nuclear war? If it wasn’t for this fact we may have already dropped a nuke or two on North Korea. What always gets me about North Korea is how primitive most of the country is. Did you ever see a photo of the earth at night? Every country has lights showing except North Korea which is mostly dark, because of the lack of electricity. Someone once said Kim Jong-un is a fat guy in a country of skinny people and this is because he eats very well while the rest of the country is starving, or at the least barely scraping by. Did you ever wonder when and why Korea was split into two countries? I’ll tell you anyway. In 1945 World War II ended. Before that the country was ruled by Japan. The United States was in one part of the country and the Soviet Union in the other. The boundary between them was the 38th Parallel. Prior to this the Japanese had ruled the country for 35 years. When the Cold War started there were negotiations between the United States and Soviet Union, but they couldn’t agree on unifying the country. The US helped conduct democratic elections in South Korea while North Korea had Kim II Sung appointed as its leader by Stalin. After the elections in South Korea the country became the Republic of South Korea and then right after that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was established in the North. Each government claimed sovereignty over the entire peninsula and this led to the Korean War where hostilities lasted from 1950 to 1953 and no peace treaty was ever signed meaning technically both sides are still at war. There is a stark difference between the two Koreas, but before I get into this I would like to talk about the Demilitarized Zone which separates the two countries. This area is known as the DMZ. Bill Clinton described this area as the scariest place on earth. It is a four-kilometers strip which runs along the 38th Parallel. Four kilometers is 2.49 miles of the heaviest guarded and mined area anywhere on the planet. Supposedly there are millions of land mines there. There are millions of soldiers at the ready on the North Korean side. To be exact the latest figures I have seen are 1,190,000 soldiers, 600,000 reserves, 5,889,000 paramilitary and every year there are about 410,000 people reaching military age. The North Koreans espouse Military First. The South Koreans have 495,000 military. It is hard to know the exact amount of American troops in South Korea, but the best guess I can make is 37,500. The South Koreans have erected robot machine guns along the DMZ which still need a human to approve firing them. North Korea has 563 combat aircraft, the South has 571 more modern aircraft. The same is true in tanks. The North has 2,414 older tanks and the South has 3,500. North Korea had 3 war ships which I could find and the South had 20. North Korea has 72 submarines which is quite a large force even if they include older ones. The South has 23 submarines. The North also has a large advantage in artillery pieces and possesses 21,100 while the South has 11,000. Lastly the North has 302 helicopters and the South has 481. North Korea is said to be a sad place. We tried to send food there years ago, but it was rejected by the North Korean government because the crates of food were marked USA. One can’t imagine the suffering which is taking place in that country with all the embargoes and the tyrannical leader. While almost the entire budget of the country is being used to create weapons, the citizens of North Korea are doing without many of the very basic essentials of life and are being forced to pay homage to a demi-god. They are routinely forced to come out during different events to honor their leader. He likes to be called by titles such as Dear Leader. He was not initially destined to lead North Korea his older brother was thought to be the successor until it was reported he was unmanly. Kim Jong-un was educated in Switzerland. South Korea’s GDP is $1,622 billion while North Korea’s GDP is $40 billion. The rate of growth in GDP in South Korea is 2.7% and in North Korea it is 0.8%. South Korea exports $552.6 billion a year while North Korea exports $4.71 billion annually. For every 1,000 live births in South Korea 4.08 infants die. In North Korea out of every 1,000 live births 26.21 die. If you are a South Korean your life expectancy is 79.3 years, but if you are a North Korean it is 69.2 years. We like to talk about the internet. In North Korea only 0.1% have internet access. In South Korea that number is 81.5%. About seven times more people commit homicides in North Korea than South Korea. Here is the kicker, North Koreans are anywhere from 1.2 inches to 3.1 inches shorter than South Koreans. I think we can see living in North Korea is no picnic. |
